


half of it

by isoldewas



Category: The Good Fight (TV)
Genre: Birdwatching, F/M, Plants, They are basically married, and then a s03 rewrite, it’s a s02 sing along, let me have this, what is a timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 18:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19257247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldewas/pseuds/isoldewas
Summary: Jay catches her smirking at everything, like it’s all amusing, like it’s done almost for her benefit and yet somehow she’s still a spectator, uninvolved.He’s describing a sociopath. She’s going to be fine.





	half of it

**Author's Note:**

> i am a simple woman, i see friends, i want them to have sex

He’s been at it for far too long. It’s like this: you see enough shit, you do enough shit and nothing touches you anymore. And then there is Marissa who’s gunning for his job and he thinks what does she know, she can’t do this, she’s seen nothing yet. And then—

Jay catches her smirking at everything, like it’s all amusing, like it’s almost done for her benefit and yet somehow she’s still a spectator, uninvolved.  
He’s describing a sociopath. She’s going to be fine.

 

 

He never quite gets how she manages to turn it around. How she gets a job without partners’ approval. How she delivers on what Diane’s asked of her with no outside help, powering through on sheer conviction that she herself is enough.

It’s not like he’s distrusting of everyone who goes for his job without keeping him in the loop, but you know what, yes, he is.

So he walks over to her desk and introduces himself.

He expects a push back, but she’s all _okay-whatever-dude. I won’t step on your toes again. It’s fine. We’re fine._

Her phone rings. “How may I help you—”

What bothers him is how all of this is way too good to be real.

She is like, genuinely nice. But he keeps looking at her and thinks: danger.

 

 

And then— Up close she’s not that terrifying.

Things get to her, she loses her cool once or twice, for a beat. Never for long though, before it gets too out of hand she’s back in Diane’s office, explaining why she snapped at yet another asshole.

She smiles behind the glass wall, and then she does this thing with her hand, like she’s emphasising a point. You’d probably have to be there to get the message, from Jay’s desk it looks like she’s shoving someone away while playing the piano. 

Not that she plays. Or, you know, maybe she does. Maybe her whole childhood was spent in big apartments with views to kill for. And maybe she had a piano in the dining room or something. 

Anyway, whatever Marissa’s doing with her hands works on Diane and then in Boseman’s office it works on Adrien: he drops his head back and laughs.

 

 

She’s so goddamn nice it’s exhausting.

 

 

Before Marissa gets her license, she sits at his desk. She starts every other conversation with “I’m bored,” which gets on his nerves. He’s got work to do.

Fast forward to a year later and: Jay’s got the same amount of work but she’s on every case he’s working.

They watch Chicago Penthouse on two laptops and she’s teaching him how to find worthwhile things in a two weeks worth of footage. She goes through day’s worth of camera work in a matter of hours, without a complaint, and sees everything just as clearly. She even narrates. Cracks up a joke a minute and opens a second bag of chips.

Jay struggles to get through the first fifty minutes and falls asleep before the first hour is over.

Marissa wakes him up when she finds something of value, her grip tightening on his arm. It startles him: her hand right there, her loud “Look,” her being right in the middle of this (and every other) case.

He doesn’t really know why she’s here. She announced it half-jokingly the first time: _I could do what you do._ It’s hardly a life goal, Jay should know.

But she wants what he has.

 

 

She is easy going, pushy and terribly nice when she needs to be. He’s never heard of Eli Gold before but he gets a picture of the man just by watching her. She knows exactly what to be, yet chooses to remain what she already is. It’s like an art form.

She could be anything and she chooses to help. The people, the firm, him. And then she fights for it.

He looks at how she schedules a meeting to negotiate her salary every six months. It’s ridiculous, she doesn’t ever get a raise, yet somehow, she’s got that winning smirk when she walks out of the door, which is— astounding.

Boseman called her an investigator just last week, so it must mean it’s working.

Marissa proudly recounts that-time-Boseman-defended-her-in-a-deposition to Jay the very day it happens: she walks out of the conference room and right over to Jay’s desk. “You won’t believe what just happened.”

Jay’s pushing papers around and has no time for whatever it is that’s got her so excited. He tries to ignore her.

She leans on his desk. “I’d suggest you make time.”

That’s when he realises: she’s not going anywhere. Not that he didn’t know that before, it just hits him with a new force: she is a part of all this.

He raises his eyes: she’s got that look, like she’s this close to snapping her fingers and redirecting his attention to her.

She’s going to be here every day. The thought is a bit alarming. 

 

 

Fast forward to a year after that: he’s got enough free time to have a date at a reasonable hour. Marissa is swamped with the new associates’ cases.

They are a week away from the salaries comparison and the not-so-equal pay shitstorm.

Jay sits down at her desk and she raises an eyebrow at him. He wants to ask whether she’s bored.

 

 

But they aren’t there yet.

 

 

She’s up for anything, cases, stakeouts, fries in the middle of the night. She meets him on the corner near the office at 6 am once and they have breakfast.

He just couldn’t sleep. This is just what she does for people.

That’s how she makes friends: quickly and all in. Real-life more-than-work friends, at that. In between Maia and Lucca and now him— she’s really good at _being there._ Again, it’s all very new to him.

He wonders whether whatever they have is larger than work. It bugs him that he can’t ask. But she just doesn’t seem to operate on these notions: to her, people might as well be people. To him, they are always already something. Jay’s got lists and sub-categories; everyone he meets tends to fall neatly into patterns. He calls it “a kind of intuition, I don’t know” and Marissa calls it “weird” as she dips one of her fries in his ketchup.

“People can surprise you, you know,” and Marissa says it like, _sure, it’s a cliché but it’s also true._

 

 

And it’s not like he doesn’t know that. 

 

 

She paints her nails black and white and bright red.

She smiles when she is pissed, she smiles when she doesn’t understand. He wonders whether she smiles when she's wrong too.

Jay really should stop trusting that if she’s okay, then all is good. It’s just that— He looks at her and things seem— safe. It’s like bad things don’t happen to her— or around her or whatever.

Sure, there was a resin scare with the baking soda in her lap and on Maia’s hand, but— Marissa brushed it aside so quickly. Nothing sticks to her until it does. She gets a boyfriend for a day there. Or a month and a half.

It’s so matter of fact, so not a big deal. It’s that Jay notices it, it’s that he files it under a “bad thing”. It’s that somewhere, it doesn’t sit right with him.

He really doesn’t need to know why.

 

 

Diane and Adrien drink late in Boseman’s office. Marissa’s watching them from her desk while signing a stack of Thank you cards for Diane’s clients. 

Jay’s watching her.

Marissa’s chewing on her pen, her chin resting on her hands. Even now, all alone and exhausted, she’s smiling.

It’s been a very long day for everyone, Jay’s obviously tired when he looks at this incredibly kind human being and thinks: she probably knows how to fight. And then: she could push somebody under a bus with that smile and they’d probably be smiling too.

That’s how infectious it is.

 

 

He catches her giving advice to the paralegals about reorganising the library.

Marissa doesn’t notice him as he halts in the middle of the hallway, staring at her for a good four seconds.

Jay’s now aware of what he thought he’d just file away with all the other things he wishes he never knew. She’s pretty.

The problem with this one is: it won’t keep shut down.

 

 

The thing about that is: yesterday, there was a party.

 

 

Marissa knows how to throw one. Better than Bennett the office manager ever could.

She spends the entirety of it running from corner to corner, spying on a client for Diane.

When it’s done, she sits on the floor in the hallway in her dress with a floral print, head turned at an awkward angle to where the consequences of her spying are about to unfold. She’s taken off her heels and is slowly sipping on her champagne.

Jay sits down next to her, careful as to not block her vantage point.

His glass is empty. It’s his second one and when he asked himself what he wanted to do before the third, he couldn’t see why sitting down next to her wasn’t something he’d usually do. 

It comes rushing back as soon as he leans against the glass wall: he isn’t that. He doesn’t do this.

It’s like having work things that can’t be contained to the office, that can’t help but fall outside of the direct scope of his responsibilities. Generally speaking, he wants none of that. But she does. Drunk, she is even better at choosing a topic equally unexciting to them both and sticking with it. He doesn’t know where to begin with his limited knowledge of birdwatching. He raises his glass to his mouth, but it's empty. A matter of a moment, his hand still near his face, she catches him by the wrist, sighs, and pours half of her champagne into his glass.

And just like that he knows how to talk birds, and watching.

And when he doesn’t know where to stop, she interrupts him: “Mike and Gabriel slept together,” she says, both names overlapping with the end of his birdwatching fun fact number four. “They don’t even work together, like ever.”

And sure, let’s talk about that now.

He takes a sip of champagne and turns his head, facing her.

“And that’s important?” He asks. The firm has two floors now. Twice as many people. Jay’s working with all those people all the time and look, nothing.

“Well," Marissa angles her head, considering, “It's a catalyst.”

She puts her glass down, near her left ankle. “Right there with alcohol, loneliness and poorly lit tiny spaces," she says and drops her head against the wall. She's playing at something.

Now, Jay isn't a detective for nothing. He looks at how they are drinking alone in the dim lights. He sets his glass down on the floor. 

Frankly, _wow._

He makes an attempt at getting up. It's tricky, he's trapped between the glass and Marissa, the hem of her dress exactly where he is supposed to put his hand. His fingers are caught mid-air and then they land at her skirt, dragging at the soft fabric. When Jay looks at her, she’s looking at his hand.

He wants to wait and see what she’ll do. In the back of his mind, he knows what it could mean. What it looks like.

Like it’s a start. Like if he waits and sees what she’d do, he’d kiss her by the end of the week. So he gets up and walks away. 

 

 

Marissa notices too much. She watches everyone intently, ready to jump in and be a hero of modern times, diffusing tension— She watches him.

He watches her.

That’s fine in itself: everyone’s looking at her. It’s her party. Well, no, but Adrien toasts her as Jay walks into a room, so it seems that way. It’s an end of the trial celebration, a we’ve-won-big kind of gathering.

The trial was a mess and she did good. So good it won Reddick Boseman Lockhart an 8.3 million settlement. So good, Craig’s still in prison. Jay’s got a lot to say to Adrien, a lot, so much that it doesn’t contain itself to a fight, it goes straight to the fundamental misunderstandings.

He’s sick of hearing that entitled bullshit over and over and over. When Adrien spits it out again, Jay can’t bring himself to listen. There is a party in the next room and Adrien pretends to get it but: there is a party. In the next room. And Craig’s in prison on false charges and Adrien knows that—

Jay’s packing up his stuff before he knows what hit him. It’s one third paperwork and two thirds empty space of a box when Marissa shows up, holding a plant. She puts it down in the box, right on the stack of papers. “Whose—” he starts before she cuts him off with a “Do you care?”

He wants to tell her how he once killed a cactus. He wants to tell her to stop throwing things at him that he doesn’t know what to do with. Not tonight. Maybe, if she could give him a break, it’d be on the night he’s quitting.

He arches an eyebrow and she backs down immediately. “Okay, fine, kitchen.”

Her finger traces the edges of the leaves. 

“Come on, you know you deserve it,” she says as if he’s refusing a participation trophy here or something. Like he might actually need an office plant but is too cowardly to take what he wants.

He keeps looking at her.

She takes a step forward, circling the desk in between them, and when they are face to face, she puts her arms around him. 

Her knuckles hit the edge of the table with an audible _thud._

He can see her face: she tries to go about it all cool, like it doesn’t hurt. Like nothing could.

And it’s almost like he hasn’t screamed at Adrien ten minutes ago: he forgets how he’s annoyed and frustrated and at war. He hugs her back on instinct. 

Her hair falls on his hands on her back and he has failed. See, now this feels like a goodbye. The resentment and rage brought on by Adrien are settling down, and what he’s left with is the realization that he has failed.

Her hands lock behind his back and he realizes just how much space in his life is occupied by this firm and its extensions. Consequences, influence, whatever. It’s there. He failed at not letting anyone get close.

He’s going to miss this, them, her, Adrien—

And then Marissa lets go. 

 

 

Jay puts the plant on the kitchen cabinet. It’s dead in five weeks time.

 

 

(By then, Jay’s back at Boseman Reddick Lockhart.)

 

 

Left on her own, he imagines her running floor to floor with so much determination. She texts him “boseman’s looking for a pi, why am I not enough” and then twenty seconds later he receives a second message. “Oh, sorry.” And then a third: “you okay?”

He quit and she keeps checking up on him. A friend friend then.

 

 

And then Adrien gets shot and everything goes to shit.

Jay comes back. He needs to be there. He wants to. It’s been six years of this and somehow he wants more of the same.

 

 

No, but that’s flirting for you, he thinks. Marissa Gold’s remix.

They decide— well, it's more of a she tells him to wait there and goes inside the coffee shop alone. She pops up on a stool right in front of her target and— Well, he wishes he had an earpiece to know what she's been saying. From where he's standing, for the past four minutes her hands have been fidgeting non-stop and now she's holding on to her cup for dear life. She's not putting on an award-winning performance, that's for certain.

Clearly, her words must cancel it out. The boy gets all flustered, as she says something he must find particularly endearing.

But then— she can look at you, and it’s all in her face, so open and so close, _trust me._ He thinks about how he sometimes isn't sure if what she's saying is right but does what she says. How it often feels like he’s losing a fight to her.

And, sure, this is a Nazi in front of her, and it's their job. Still. She's doesn't break eye contact and forty seconds later the young man starts blabbering. Marissa angles her head, nods and smiles, polite and nice and _gotcha._

 

 

Their latest client will also be their last if things don’t calm down right the fuck now.

It’s a dispute over an account of a date, which is touching on anything from consent to well, consent. He and Marissa end up on opposite sides of this very fast.

He’s still reeling from Adrien getting shot and tries to steer clear of that whole volatile mess. Especially since they’ve already got into a screaming match that morning. Right after the deposition, and he didn’t really win that one. She’s unrelenting and he’s tired: they were off to a rough start.

He hears Marissa’s also fought with Maia, snapped at Diane and divulged confidential information to the opposition. The case is dividing everyone into camps, the whole thing too unnerving to be able to be polite about it.

And Marissa ends up in the centre of nearly every fight dispute that breaks out. But she’s also investigating and going in and out of the office, he sees her drinking coffee and eating bagels at 11 am and then she spends the lunch break hunched over her computer. When Jay walks past Adrien’s office, she’s there too. She goes out and comes back near 8 pm, smelling of beer and cigarettes, but not drunk.

He wonders whether she’s from a broken home or something. Maybe that’s how she has time for all of this.

She somehow has time to be both well rested and everywhere.

Every. Fucking. Where.

 

 

Jay goes to a bachelor party. It’s outside of the firm’s neighbourhood. It’s a weeknight. It’s not a particularly popular place. 

Marissa is sitting at the bar with people he doesn’t know.

He is usually so careful about separating his work and his personal life. But she waves at him, raises her glass in her other hand. She isn’t going to let this slide.

Marissa introduces him as “that guy whose job I’m stealing” and he shakes his head at that while she says a bunch of names he’s never heard her mention before. Anna, Katie, Grace, Jean, and huh, he recognises her dress: that’s the same floral print she wore to the party.

He goes to join his friends.

It’s a nice place: high ceilings and clean toilets.

Near the sink, Marissa’s drying her hands. (Every-fucking-where.) The machine is impossibly loud, not that he was aiming for small talk. 

The only source of light is coming from behind the mirror, a fluorescent lamp that paints everything in deep shadows and way-too-bright highlights. He’s not sure she is watching him in the mirror, but she’s smiling, shaking her head.

“Hello,” he says, raising his voice just enough to counter the dryer.

Marissa spins around, facing him, her arms folding over her chest. The loud noise stops.

She gives him a once over, her eyes lingering on his arms. He’s left his jacket upstairs with his friends and it occurs to him that she might have never seen him in a t-shirt.

She takes one step in his direction, circling around, choosing the best angle of attack. She wants something from him.

The last of the documents on the volatile case were filed today and Jay kept avoiding her. Marissa was still stirring up arguments. It’s like she is happy with the havoc she creates.

She seems ready for a fight. Jay doesn’t feel like giving her the satisfaction of winning by default. He stays right there and goes down that road, again.

“Oh my god, really?” “Well you still don’t see why you’re wrong—” Without skipping a beat they counter each other, both of them relentless. “Again?” “Are you kidding—”

She leans forward but halts, and it’s like she hasn’t quite decided whether she wants to grab him or hit him. He uses the pause to get to his point: “He went down on her, it’s not like—” Jay raises his hands in the air, trying for emphasis.

“Yeah don’t finish that—”

“What do you even—” and he never does get to the end of that sentence: she grabs his hand and puts it on her chest.

There’s a beat where he forgets that this is exactly what they are fighting about. She doesn’t let go of his hand and keeps it there and he realises this is probably a part of their debate. A challenge.

The light keeps shifting over her face.

It’s a winning tactic, because Jay’s mind is going blank.

“Oh so if you don’t want it you should tell me right now, right?” She’s proving a point. He’s touching her, she’s making him touch her, he— his hand is on her chest. There is a heartbeat underneath these clothes and it’s racing.

 _No,_ he wants to say. _Sure, yeah, when you don’t want to._ You say no when you don’t. But that’s not him.

His face must show it cause she falters, her fingers tapping at his hand.

Jay keeps looking at her, how she’s considering her next move carefully, intent on making a right one, on _winning._ This again is a remnant of the firm: even here, even now, this is what it comes down to. 

Marissa bears herself higher than her five feet. They keep standing near the sink, their reflection blurred at the edge of his vision. The lights don’t help. Her face looks unfamiliar, the way she gets when she’s about to prove everyone right, but it’s not a well-lit conference room, it’s a bathroom in the middle of nowhere and the tension here is not going to be diffused by Julius or a first-year associate wandering into the conference room by mistake.

For a second what’s supposed to be her dramatic re-enactment of every scandal that ever was breaks. Her face falls flat and blank until there is something very different to it, forming. Jay interrupts it.

“Is this how you argue?” he swallows. “With everyone else too?”

She rolls her eyes, but he still wants his answer. Is this how her conversation went with Maia or Diane or James from the accounting— “No,” she backs away a little, and he lets out a breath. “I thought it’d work,” she says on the exhale.

"Why?" and he hates how it comes out: like he wants it to be something. But then: _I thought._

_What are you thinking now?_

She doesn't answer that. She shrugs and waits.

Everything kind and friendly about her slips away. Right about now, the axis of the earth must be shifting: she is at the centre of the fucking world.

There’s an equilibrium, a symmetry of sorts to this. In all its physicality and tension and _context,_ it’s just an argument.

And then she blows it wide open. That centre of the world bats his hands away, puts hers on his arms, skin to skin, all in one blurry move that’s over before it began. She must really have a clear understanding of where this is going: without sparing a second she pushes him inside the stall behind them. It’s four walls of green marble lookalike. It’s clean too. The music is louder, Marissa’s standing closer.

Now, obviously, this is going _somewhere._ Jay knows that. He also knows he’s nowhere near stopping it. He reaches for a lock behind them and her eyes follow his movement, almost surprised.

Why not. He’s surprised too.

His silence is an already gigantic clue in this seduction scheme, and then he goes and adds locking the fucking door on top of it. Might as well wear a flashy neon sign that reads take-me-now.

“See, you are supposed to say no right now,” Marissa leans in, lifts her eyebrows.

She knows she’s got him. He knows he’s got her.

There is a smile tugging at her lips. “Tell me to stop.” She taps her fingers on his chest. He’s smiling too. 

_Infectious._

It’s like a never-ending game of _yes, and_ with her. She keeps piling things on top of each other until something breaks. 

"Fuck," she lets out, in an entirely new tone, claiming even more of his space and then— well, he must have missed something, because she’s going to her knees.

Her left hand settles on his hip, careful but undeniably there.

It’s like, he thinks, both catastrophes are reaching their conclusion in a different one. Adrien’s bullet wound and that woman’s unfortunate date, every fight that’s broken loose, him quitting and him coming back, Marissa staying right there. All that finds its way into this too. They’re still in the middle of an argument. She’s still proving her point.

Her hand is hot against his thigh, through his jeans, on his stomach when she pulls up his t-shirt and goes for his belt.

There are a hundred bars in the city. They could’ve easily chosen different ones. Not that complicated, in retrospect. A lot less work. God, he’s going to see her at work tomorrow.

She’s quick with his belt and his zipper and his dick’s in her hand before he knows it, and then she’s taking him in her mouth.

It’s like a punch except it’s nowhere near that. He’s not sure how to— It’s way too fast, and somehow, even more importantly, it’s too soon.

He can’t stop watching what her mouth is doing to him.

She keeps going, her head moving up and down, and he tries not to groan too loud, but what does he know, he’s breathing so hard he almost can’t hear the music. He bites his lip, stupidly desperate. 

He thinks, not that it’s a fully formed idea, but— They could have never met. Diane might not have hired her, Adrien might not have reached out to Diane. They could have never spoken to each other. Jay would’ve heard the name Marissa Gold on the news in twenty years or so, as the receiver of the Nobel Peace Prize or something.

His hand’s clutching too tight at her shoulder. 

Marissa’s free hand settles on his hipbone, for leverage or support, he isn’t sure. She’s— pretty, his brain provides, dumbstruck.

Someone’s using the dryer. It’s kind of silly how the world outside this still exists.

Marissa looks up without taking her mouth off him, her hand leaving marks where her nails have dug into the skin over his hip.

He might be winning the bachelor party.

 

 

Next day the faint bruises on her knees are barely visible underneath the black stockings. Jay almost chokes on his doughnut.

 

 

Almost. He’s not thirteen, is he, nor is he eighteen or twenty-two or even her age.

Yesterday— It’s nothing. Not even a hookup. Complicated, sure, mostly because they now have to figure out how they are going to navigate around it. It’s that— She’ll throw him away, right? After.

Like, in all her niceness and kindness she’ll just move on at some point, spreading love and peace and joy everywhere else, except for the places she’d been to already. _Let’s not pretend it meant something._

He’s a bit too late to the party but he gets there: he really, really likes her. He can leave it at that, he thinks, but throw in a real thing and that won’t be an option.

It’s a crossroads of sorts. It’s all very clear in his head: you either do something about it or you don’t.

And he thinks about his apartment of only so many rooms and how there are only so many hours in a day and then he thinks, _bullshit._

It’s these walls. It’s that they’ve already met, they’ve met and talked and Jay knows her. And what would he do with it if—

She’s talking to Lucca in the office, waving her hands around. Her eyes keep darting back to him, and Jay can’t stop staring either. 

They lock eyes for a second time and Marissa breaks contact as soon as, smiling wide, all teeth, bright and unguarded and _careless._

Lucca turns her head and they lock eyes. He frowns but doesn’t look away: no, that’s hiding something. They keep staring at each other and Lucca’s hands go to her hips and he’s watching in slow motion how she puts it together.

And at that moment he sees how painfully obvious this would be, to anyone. 

And he doesn’t do this. He doesn’t do friends, at work, or BJs at bars half a city across and— he won’t be that. He’s been at it far too long to know it’s going to come out. And it’s nothing as of now and he can put a stop to whatever.

Lucca keeps looking at him, a smile tugging at her lips.

 

 

It’s the same day, although around 2 pm Jay feels like he really would be okay if it just stopped and skipped to the weekend. 

He watches the people shuffling around the two floors. Every day, it’s the same thing: their lives collapsing in on themselves. He sees how small it all is, how tangled up in this.

How inside these walls the first-year associates spend their free time studying up on upcoming cases and drinking themselves into oblivion only to not be fired by sheer comparison to the others. Becoming second, third, fourth-year associate doesn’t help any of it. They seem to want to make partner more than they want to make it home alive. And it’s not like they are not going home to a family, are they? They are out for blood, even the nicest of the bunch, and they’ll do what it takes to _matter._

Jay never had to do that, to prove that he was worth keeping around, to fight others for air. Until her. Obviously.

Marissa matters. Some of it came with Diane’s unquestioning approval. Some of it, she worked very hard to establish. And some comes from a place that has nothing to do with her father’s name or the Florrick’s scandal. It’s that she’s undeniably there. A part of _everything,_ from day one.

For all Jay’s unwillingness to participate in that ridiculous competition, he has been proving something for almost three years now. Marissa came along and suddenly he realized how much he had to lose. How much of him she’d be able to take away.

He just never got how much of it was outside the walls of Boseman Reddick Lockhart.

“Jay, could you get on on that?” He jerks at Diane’s words, his leg brushing against Marissa’s under the conference table. She looks up at him, raised eyebrows and mouth curving in a grin.

He loses thread of Liz’s presentation for a solid ten seconds. Marissa just brushes it off. And that’s the thing.

Marissa— to her, some problems don’t exist.

Sure, nothing is ever easy: her life must have taken a toll. Maybe her dad’s job ruined her childhood. Maybe her mother’s dismissal of it screwed up her ability to take people at their word.

But at this point, everything about her seems like armour. How she sees past the bullshit and knows the right answer. How her disappointment doesn’t last long, how she sees the best and the worst in people, simultaneously. How she’s kind.

She just knows how to be fun, no effort, no rewards. On instinct. That’s what’s exhausting: she’s not even trying, and he can’t— stop any of it. He wants to drop to his knees, right there.

He wants to place his hands on her hips, an exact replica of what she did yesterday, of how she did it. He wants to get out and breathe what amounts to fresh air in Chicago. He wants to see where she lives and how she sleeps and how she dresses and undresses, but really, above all— he wants nothing to do with it.

He catches Marissa after the meeting, pulls her aside and she stares, face blank, at his hand on her arm. Maybe she’s considering ending it too.

“I’m fine,” she says, shaking her head, looking past his shoulder.

“You are not though,” she adds, her voice very soft. He lets his eyes fall on her. She’s— She’s grinning at him. Like it’s funny that he’s not automatically okay with whatever, that it matters, that just like the fact that she wore the same dress to both the party and the bar (or that she is pretty or that there are bruises on her knees or that he never thinks about how he used to do his job without her around) he can’t make it matter less. 

Marissa puts her hands on her hips, but it’s— to buy time. She’s uncertain. 

It strikes him that he can’t usually get a read on her, what with knowing her, with her telling him what she thinks right when she thinks it, with Marissa being Marissa: loud and bright and blinding—

“Look, if you are going to be weird about it,” she wiggles her eyebrows, and he doesn’t know if she kidding or not, “Let’s not.”

This is still a question even if not phrased like one.

“Sure,” Jay manages on an exhale. This is a question too, but she can’t possibly know that.

Marissa is kind enough not to ask anything. She leaves it at that, again, that terrible, excruciating niceness of hers. She lets it go because he asked her to. He really, really wanted her to have kept pushing.

It’s a good thing, he thinks, that he knows how not to get things he wants. He’s really, really good at it. 

 

 

There’s like a month where nothing happens. For a week she’s on vacation, another he’s on the Sweeney case. There is always a scandal you can get invested in, so he tries that.

It gets easier. And then it gets downright easy.

It just doesn’t— it doesn’t hurt less, with time. He keeps waiting it out.

Right until he gets locked up. It'd be hilarious if it wasn’t true.

He thinks, in a disturbing thought cloud, _I’m never going to set foot there again._ And suddenly it isn’t so bad, the idea of having his life belong in part to this firm and to these people. It’s been seven years and he fought against the current but he never left the fucking river, it has to mean something.

He comes back to his place in the middle of the day, when everything is bright, and the blank spaces on the white walls, where Marissa has taken several pieces off, are that much brighter.

The dead plant from the office is in the trash. It doesn’t take years of investigative experience to conclude what happened.

Later that evening, Marissa forwards him the link to the targeting post. The article is pretty generic, the photomontage isn’t ideal either. The setting is unflattering to the colours, on some, the perspective is off—

He prints it out. He puts it up on the wall. It’s almost a vision board now: her perception of his art. All a lie, all untrue; just to get him to stay.

 

 

“You’re running a campaign?” He can’t believe it. Her and Julius, working together. On their own. By choice. “For _him?_ ”

“It’s what my dad does.” She says it the way people say “obviously,” a bit disappointed he doesn’t get it on his own.

He catches her wrist and regrets it the second they lock eyes. She is standing very close to him, and it’s not like that never happens anymore. But it hits him hard every time. Her body was very close once: he doesn’t know how to reset the limits back to “you never blew me in a bar on the other side of Chicago, not only that, but I never thought you would.”

And then there is a small matter of that flicker of something tugging at his chest; dangerously resembling a heartache. That, Jay pushes aside.

All to say, near her, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

It’s like they’ve entered an unspoken competition where whoever cares less wins. Only Marissa isn’t even playing. She’s just like before.

It’s all very poetic in his head and he can’t shut it out. The poetry and the very idea of it.

He wonders how she makes sense of all this. Maybe she doesn’t have to. Surely, if there was an exception to mankind’s need to explain everything away, it’d be her. 

 

 

When he meets Naomi he falls head over heels, or as close as it gets. She doesn’t answer questions in a straight line, she doesn’t go to the bar two blocks from the firm for drinks. And, and she doesn’t work in Boseman Reddick Lockhart. 

She tells him she doesn’t like Adrien very much and that’s when he kisses her for the first time. That’s almost why he kisses her.

Jay finds out she harbours resentment towards two out of three name partners and it’s all too easy to push her against the wall, his hip between her thighs. She’s not particularly fond of Diane either, which makes the math that much easier.

She’ll never be a part of this. She is on the outside, not completely detached from it but— even if they did meet during the investigation— far enough.

Far enough that she’s looking in.

He tells her about the Sweeney case, a matter of fact observation on the state of the man’s marriage. And as soon as it registers with her, there is a look in her eye, and she must be aware of what's happening: she’s angling for a story. Forwarding the conversation back to his off-handed comment. He can't decide if it’s worse, if she knows and doesn’t care.

She’s connecting the dots, he shouldn’t have said anything but in the back of his mind, there is another thing putting itself together. He isn’t running away from the firm.

Naomi’s very far from Marissa, that’s what’s so different. He’s tangled up in _her._

Fuck.

 

 

Lucca asks him for the detailed account of everyone’s salary and he spends the night staring at the numbers.

It doesn’t add up. He keeps seeing Marissa running around, giving everyone orders like she has any right to and according to this here, she almost does.

He goes straight to Adrien. In hindsight, he should have predicted the unapologetic manner in which the man dismisses the topic.

Jay walks out of there and it takes going down the stairs to know exactly what to do next. 

 

 

They don’t work on cases with Marissa ever since a whole lot of new white associates had a lot to ask of her.

When she comes over to the office he's currently occupying (Jessie called in sick), a stack of papers in her arms close to her chest, he doesn’t think she needs his help.

She sits down and fumbles with her papers for half an hour, typing angrily at her keyboard from time to time. 

There is a fight coming, but he decides to wait it out. _Bring it on,_ he thinks. _Or, you know, reconsider? Aren’t we all just tired here tonight?_

“You started a fucking war,” is her opening statement after nearly forty minutes of glares.

It’s a lot. Very impressive for an opening, but entirely inappropriate for the generic office setting late in the evening. _A war, you, started._ Like he is at fault.

_Fuck you._

“Yes,” he offers instead. “I did—“ Out of spite. Because _how the hell do you get everything you want._

And damn the glass walls he wants to scream about this, he wants her to stop twisting it into something it’s not and just listen and he wants to grab her by the hips and have a debate on injustice later.

“I am good at this job,” she says, pointing a finger at him from across the room. “That’s not about that—”

She stands up with such force, her chair goes rolling into a wall behind her.

“Just as good as you! You do get that all the cases—”

“That is so absolutely not about that either,” he gets to his feet too. For a split second, she breaks character, undeniably glad to get a rise out of him. 

“And solve—” “Are you even listening—” “Seven isn’t four!” “Maya got fired!” she shouts, punctuating every word with the strong feeling of _this is final, this is fucking it, don’t you dare go further than this._

He’s watching her as she paces from one corner to the other, arms crossed.

“You released confidential information.” “No,” he tries, but again, she cuts him off.

“You found it,” she takes a step forward, “you read it,” another step, “you didn’t like it—“

He’s got nothing to say. Her finger is at his chest. She has him backed into a corner and all he can see is how her pupils are blown out, how fast her chest is rising, how she’s inches apart from him. How to the anger and the how-dare-you there is a new kind of tension in the room.

Last time she pushed him into a wall looked a lot like this one.

This is where her fury happens. Somehow this is where she wants to resolve it. Cornering him and explaining why she’s right. Admittedly, Jay did the very same thing with Adrien but— He’s got a head start on her: his tipping point happened hours ago.

And, to be fair, she’s less destructive than he was.

“Is it worth it?” she asks, her features shifting into an overdramatic disgust.

And he knows her interrogation style ( _He’s the tough one, I’m just here to see how it’s done,_ she’ll say in a few weeks). This is all her, she’s not playing. She’s either very angry or very convincing. She seems almost dangerous in how badly she needs an answer.

He has to nod before she’ll move her hand again. It’s gunpoint. But it’s her, so it’s not that scary.

To be fair, it’s well past eleven at this point and the office has emptied out so if she were to try and hurt him, no one would see. He suddenly doesn’t want to be trapped anymore. 

Jay leans in and by some kind of push and pull, it works. He manages to wiggle out of her grip. 

“Okay. I—” _Am. Tired._

He sits down on the couch, hopes it’ll read as a clear sign of his defeat. He doesn’t know where it went wrong.

Marissa follows him to the couch, throws her head back.

Everything just feels different, everything about her feels different and sharp and unfamiliar. (She’s so nice it’s exhausting.)

He’s so tired and she’s right there. She pushed him into the wall, again, and she’s looking at him, again, and she’s kind. Blunt. Bold. Brave.

Terrifying.

He’s so tired of being scared of her.

Jay shifts, placing his hand carefully on her arm, and she springs up instantly, all focus and energy and delight. Her mouth opens in a smile and he leans in and kisses her. It’s not like there’s a plan to it.

The edge of her teeth, her hand on his throat, on his jaw, tight on his shoulders.

Kissing her feels like it might just mean something. Like he’s confessing a truth to her, something that ought to stay put and _won’t._ Like she’s won.

He almost wants to go all “I have no recollection of it happening” _while_ it’s happening. Marissa pulls away first. She’s shaking her head, dismissing it already.

It occurs to him, that it be the direct result of what he’s done. That she doesn’t actually know where she stands. She does things out of spite, curious to see what will give. But there is no plan to it. She’s just guessing.

If he had to guess— 

Her face is so close, he wants—

But then, it’s been over for over a year. And over is a nice way of putting it. It’s been over and dead and they are both exceptionally good at forgetting history.

Not right now though. It comes surging back: the bathroom, the champagne, the dress, his hand on her wrist.

“Oh, we can not talk about it,” she offers. Lets out a little, unsure laugh.

“Thank you,” he says and she swings her leg over his lap.

It’s so swift a movement she almost falls over and his hands go to her hips, waist, back, he’s actually trying to decide where’s the safest place to keep them until he realises he’s touching her. Her curls fall in his face, her eyes are on him. She’s patient and impatient and it keeps changing, the mood, the laws, the lay of the fucking land. He doesn’t know where to start with this. Her fingers scrape at the back of his neck.

Right now, she’s looking impossibly sure of herself.

He tries for sure too: “Are you playing a professional misconduct bingo?” It’s an easy deflection. Not his best.

Obviously, it’s not over, the proverbial door isn’t closed, she’s in his lap, his hand is under her skirt. That’s not nothing.

“Uh-huh,” she says, tucking her hair behind her shoulders. Her hips jerk forward.

“First you steal my job,” he says, his voice only a little strained. It’s fine. He’s fine.

“Then I come after your money—” she continues in a low voice that goes straight to his head and then straight to his dick.

“Don’t—” and his hands push up the edge of her shirt. They’ve been fighting about it not two minutes before, she shouldn’t push it.

She is soft all over. His fingers trace the insides of her thighs, unchecked, uninhibited. She bites into his shoulder and his hands move to the low of her back where her skirt meets the hem of her shirt. It’s a fucking lot, to be able, _allowed_ to touch her everywhere. Unlimited and careless and welcome.

She puts her mouth on his, pulling her shirt off. She starts grinding against him and her hands go to his shoulders again and start to push his shirt off. He takes off her bra.

When he pushes a finger in her, she lets out a groan that sounds ridiculously like _finally._ She jerks, open mouth and quick breaths. 

Her eyes are on him, intense, focused. Her mouth falls open on another gasp and he kisses her. She pulls away and laughs, delighted.

All that radiant youth, all that utilised energy, all of it, right there. He wraps his other hand around her waist. 

He kisses her again, greedy and desperate and _finally._ She chuckles, but her face— it’s an almost pained expression. Like, maybe, she’s desperate too. Maybe this isn’t easy for her either. Maybe, when she goes through the motions and shuts everything out on a will, it’s not easy and it hurts and they’ve been hurting on their fucking own for a while now.

It’s been five years since they met. Almost exactly to the date. The palms of her hands are warm against his chest and he thinks, maybe, all of that is true. 

 

 

Chumhum orders an investigation, a read on the culture, if you will. Karla makes everyone sit too close to each other on the stairs and talk out loud about things that bother them. She also erupts into uncontrollable laughter at times and nothing about this says honesty or transparency—

He should’ve expected his name to be a part of the conversation. He really should’ve.

He tenses up and Marissa’s hand flies to his arm, anchoring him to the semblance of indifference.

“No, no, no, that is not a gender thing, that is a race thing,” he hears and his eyes are locked in on Karla. He doesn’t know what will happen if he looks at Marissa right now.

He feels her shift, her knee bumping against his, the length of her thigh pressed up against his.

The noise keeps rising, every new voice welcome and heard and documented by Karla.

Marissa turns her head and leans in, takes a grave pause before whispering “So? Are we a gender or a race thing?”

He laughs, because it was probably supposed to come off as a joke.

 

 

They are five weeks from Maia kissing her.

**Author's Note:**

> 4 eps in and I wanted them to have kids and move in a suburban house. i never, ever want that


End file.
